theres no night elves that remember. we dont know how long it took to become night elves all we know is that the well of eternity did it but the night elves didnt become immortal until 10,000 years ago and the night elf empire existed for many thousands of years before that.

"I was a normal baby for 30 seconds, then ninjas stole my mamma" - Deadpool
"so what do we do?" "well jack, you stand there and say 'gee rocket raccoon I'm so glad you brought that Unfeasibly large cannon with you..' and i go like this BRAKKA BRAKKA BRAKKA" - Rocket Raccoon

The topic of Night Elves's immortality is not quite clear. Nozdormu gave the blessing to Nordrassil that as long as the tree stands NE would never age past their prime. Were NE immortal before that or they were just really long lived?

To be fair, the Kaldorei shouldn't have any "sub-species", sure we can have some of the other intelligent races that are part of the Kaldorei Empire under sub-species, but they don't really have any true sub-species that aren't evil or don't make sense (Naga, Satyr, High Elves, Blood Elves, FelBlood Elves, Wretched).

I think Tyrande would welcome the Silver Covenant into Teldrassil if they requested it. It would be an interesting twist. They hate Blood Elves, they are skilled rangers, the Shen'dralar are already there, Tyrande had no problems at all with teaming up with Kael'thas to hunt Illidan, let alone letting Illidan free of his prison.
If High Elves happen somehow, ever, it would be my preference. Tyrande would also have been fighting at the side of the remaining high elves for over a decade now as members of the Alliance.

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Originally Posted by Soulwind

The way I understand it, the trolls slowly turned into night elves through several generations, the first ones weren't immortal.

It was only the gift of Nordrassil after the suffering endured and the price they paid in assisting in the battle against Sargeras that The Aspects gifted the Children of the Stars with immortality, though still long lived. But this change from trolls is such ancient history it's not something any of them would remotely be connected with. About as much chance as we have as knowing about our history when we were interbreeding with Neanderthal and Denisovans, all we have now is the evidence to show us it happened. They only know they were in legends and myth a night loving people who were changed by their Goddess over eons as they lived around her lake and nourished themselves on it's energies.

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Originally Posted by shoc

But if Night Elves evolved from Dark Trolls, why are there still Dark Trolls? Checkmate Athiests.

QFT. And if Spanish and Italian came from Latin, how can Catholic priests still speak and read Latin? And how in the hell can a wolf exist if some of them were bred to be what we see as dogs? SHEESH! Bill Nye probably thinks English came from Old English and Germanic languages hybridized with French from the Normans intermingling and ruling over the Anglo Saxons along with subtle additions of slang injected by Bill Shakespeare, HA!. And don't get me started of Gaelic or Welsh. Ye-owza!

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Originally Posted by Wildmoon

The topic of Night Elves's immortality is not quite clear. Nozdormu gave the blessing to Nordrassil that as long as the tree stands NE would never age past their prime. Were NE immortal before that or they were just really long lived?

Just long lived. There would be no gift from Alexstrasza and Nozdormu necessary otherwise, and Ysera would not have made the pact with Furion to spend time in the Dream. If was a gift for their role in the defeat of the Highborn and Azshara's tampering with Sargeras and the immense suffering and losses they endured.

i think it would be really cool to explore the queens and kings of the night elves before azshara.

i dont know if blizzards even given any thought about that really since all we really know about them is that there definitely were more before her and at some point the pandaren thought they were becoming reckless and douchey and closed off their borders to them.

maybe something they could look into during a south seas expansion, or the infinite dragon stuff if they turn that into an expansion

"I was a normal baby for 30 seconds, then ninjas stole my mamma" - Deadpool
"so what do we do?" "well jack, you stand there and say 'gee rocket raccoon I'm so glad you brought that Unfeasibly large cannon with you..' and i go like this BRAKKA BRAKKA BRAKKA" - Rocket Raccoon

But if Night Elves evolved from Dark Trolls, why are there still Dark Trolls? Checkmate Athiests.

It's been so long since I'd heard this king of gibberish that I almost forgot how angry that argument makes me.

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Originally Posted by Wildmoon

The topic of Night Elves's immortality is not quite clear. Nozdormu gave the blessing to Nordrassil that as long as the tree stands NE would never age past their prime. Were NE immortal before that or they were just really long lived?

It would be nice to have some more information regarding this time period for sure, and seeing dark troll and night elf interactions now that their shared heritage is known would also be pretty cool.

Their shared heritage isn't known. No one in the setting knows anything about that, only the playerbase does. I personally don't find it interesting in the least, but I suppose I can't fault other people their own interest.

I'd rather see more of ancient Kaldorei civilization before the Sundering. If we had gone back in time to Azeroth's past we could have had a nice little Magic Kingdom of Zeal kind of expansion. I'm being partially tongue-in-cheek here, but I did always want more Caverns of Time raids/dungeons occurring in the distant ancient past.

For the troll fanatics out there, we could see the primeval troll empire too.

It's been so long since I'd heard this king of gibberish that I almost forgot how angry that argument makes me.

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It would be nice to have some more information regarding this time period for sure, and seeing dark troll and night elf interactions now that their shared heritage is known would also be pretty cool.

brann knows, we know. maybe some zandalari might know but even if told the night elves wouldnt accept it.

the night elves are super xenophobic. it takes a good smack in the face for the night elves to put aside their differences with most people.

"I was a normal baby for 30 seconds, then ninjas stole my mamma" - Deadpool
"so what do we do?" "well jack, you stand there and say 'gee rocket raccoon I'm so glad you brought that Unfeasibly large cannon with you..' and i go like this BRAKKA BRAKKA BRAKKA" - Rocket Raccoon

Your sensibilities are intrinsically and objectively wrong. I say so.
With that out of the way The issue here is they could have made their silly be about insane over the top addiction and magic feeming. Instead of metrosexuals. Because they had a /silly aspect in WC3, which was centered around being raving drug addicts, and it didn't cost them their dignity and feed into the meme of elves being feminine. You even had dumb asses claiming Blood Elves racially were incapable of being warriors as a class. Your gauge for this stuff is very unique. Most of the races silly still play on the classic established 4th wall breaking silly they had in the RTS games. Blood Elves were changed. Recognize this distinction at the very least.

Even my freaking female Orc's sillies are about how she has chest hair and no oestrogen! They're ALL like that, Blood Elves have it pretty easy by comparison. /silly often breaks the fourth wall.

Originally Posted by Yig

Because you say so? You're wrong. I say so. Update the software on your Warcraft 3 sensibility gauge. It's an objective intrinsic behavior of the universe. I say so.

You mean the units in WC3? All the blood elves are wearing robes and you can't see their physique at all. Not even K-T or the spellbreaker. They never looked beefy to me.

You're missing the point here, wildly. 2D skins would be cheap as fuck to make us pay money for. Actually putting work into a model, and further, a possible 1-10 questing experience with lore to explain the addition, is something valuable and not so blatantly disrespectful and contrary to the attitude they've shown to people in the last 9 years when talking about the future of these options.

A 2d texture option is superficial when it comes to dev resources. Instead of custom models for unique cool mount #500, they would actually find an excuse to offer some really cool lore oriented content even people who don't care about lore would be interested. Things they've always wanted to do but couldn't because of limited resources taking the place of pets and mounts. Entertain the notion for a moment. A new model with unique animations and possibly even an instanced starting zone using preexisting settings would not require a new starting zone, only an instanced area with a small questline. Tattoos and 2d textures? Blech. I'll stick with my naive optimism to this world of narrow overcompensating trepidation and reservation. I say so. Never mind we only have Draenei Shaman in the lore BECAUSE THE BROKEN INSTRUCTED the other Draenei and were welcomed back into Draenei society. They are all over the Alliance world, what in your mind makes them implausible. I just think they look kind of stupid outside of concept art, but a PAndaren quality model would be interesting. Still, the last example I would have used. A Unique high elf with different animations and posture and customization from a blood elf is more apt.

I don't think it's a resource issue, it's a game integrity issue. They aren't going to let us play Fel Orcs or High Elves via a skin. It's just wrong lore-wise. They haven't even let us play Wildhammer Dwarves to date, why would they suddenly completely change that policy to the point we can roll a Broken?

Originally Posted by Yig

I think helm restrictions on armor types should be lifted basically (FOR TRANSMOGGING). Warriors could have hats, eye patches, hoods. But seeing a mage with plate helm is odd, then again in WC art it kind of makes a sort of sense. Moving on.

I think that they should at least allow plate classes to mog mail below level 40 or whatever it was. Really sucks how I got together a full set of the old Scarlet Crusade armour but can only mog it on a mail class, which is weird as it's obviously paladin/warrior themed.

Originally Posted by Yig

No. It's a temporary buff you cannot use in combat and you lose all access to your abilities to summon your keg. Lorewise, a Brewmaster should ALWAYS have that on his back, which is what he's throwing to slow mobs with that AOE ability kind of. It should be altered to be permanent and seen in combat, at least for Brewmasters.
Didn't your mother and father teach you anything about MOP's brewfest?

Don't think I ever tried to use mine in combat, dunno why they don't relax that restriction.

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Originally Posted by Futhark

Yes, that's actually my Brewmaster. But the keg is only good for three minutes every hour (or half hour) and you can't use it in combat. It is fun to toss beers to everyone though. And the hat is white gear, so un-moggable.

Tankards are always equipped/mogged though. Dwarven requirement.

Cursed white gear exclusion!

Do you have a keg pony to follow you around as well?

Originally Posted by Soulwind

Funny you mention that, so far every race has one facial model, goblins hide this by using different nose and ear tips, since those aren't animated, but everything else is shared between all the faces.

I don't think we'll get different face models, the way Blizzard rigs the characters would force them to make a different set of animations for each face. We might get some different ears, noses, chins and tusks, but that's about it.

I'm thinking new faces will in a way look more similar to each other because the old faces had their expression baked into the texture (eg you choose a cranky face and look cranky regardless of what emote your character is doing) whereas the new ones have full facial expressions controlled by underlying bones so the skins themselves will have to have neutral expressions.

Originally Posted by Thaladhrun

I think the difference is Dark Trolls have nothing whatsoever to do with the Alliance. You can justify putting HE under NE or (less plausibly, IMO) humans, but what have dark trolls got to do with NE these days, or the Alliance?

They're hostile to everyone and as far as we know they are extinct as of Cata. Twilight Cult wiped out the last remnants in Hyjal. I think that was confirmed in Brann's journal thing?

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Originally Posted by shoc

But if Night Elves evolved from Dark Trolls, why are there still Dark Trolls? Checkmate Athiests.

"I was a normal baby for 30 seconds, then ninjas stole my mamma" - Deadpool
"so what do we do?" "well jack, you stand there and say 'gee rocket raccoon I'm so glad you brought that Unfeasibly large cannon with you..' and i go like this BRAKKA BRAKKA BRAKKA" - Rocket Raccoon

Their shared heritage isn't known. No one in the setting knows anything about that, only the playerbase does. I personally don't find it interesting in the least, but I suppose I can't fault other people their own interest.

Brann is canon, he suspects it, and his magazine article was confirmed as canon by a Blue. It's something archaeologists in the world and arcanists of lore would know of, and fighting words if you bring it up with an elf

But talk about a boring and weird sub race based on racial options. Bleck.

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Originally Posted by Mormolyce

Even my freaking female Orc's sillies are about how she has chest hair and no oestrogen! They're ALL like that, Blood Elves have it pretty easy by comparison. /silly often breaks the fourth wall.

They all break the 4th wall. The issue is of theme. This is blurry, not worth talking further.

Originally Posted by Mormolyce

You mean the units in WC3? All the blood elves are wearing robes and you can't see their physique at all. Not even K-T or the spellbreaker. They never looked beefy to me.

I don't think it's a resource issue, it's a game integrity issue. They aren't going to let us play Fel Orcs or High Elves via a skin. It's just wrong lore-wise. They haven't even let us play Wildhammer Dwarves to date, why would they suddenly completely change that policy to the point we can roll a Broken?

Dude. You like,... Dude,... Are you totally unaware of how many times Blizzard devs have told us they want to do this and plan to do this and why they haven't yet done this,... and that they usually offer SPECIFICALLY options like Wildhammer tats and Mag'har skins as examples. Those are the go to examples. I forgive you for not knowing. Also, we had wildhammer tattoos for a few weeks, I played a shaman in Cata's beta with wildhammer tattoos up to level 20, and even when they were removed, my shaman kept his tats until beta's end. They were rough and clearly an experiment or a developer goofing around with ideas that got tossed for how much work it would have been to make them acceptable to Blizzard's standards. As it was, they just threw in the NPC skins, preset custom skin color hair color and all, as player options. You were stuck only able to change a few things. Lore wise, Dark Irons and Wildhammer now live in Ironforge. They also changed ALL grey skinned dwarf player options to ONLY have red eyes in Cata. A thread was made by grey skin dwarf players asking why their eyes all changed to be red. A blue replied it was to show they are all Dark Irons living in Ironforge to reflect the lore of Cata.

Since then, GC tweeted several times about this and other devs in interviews I can't recall specifics on if you really require sources, and so has Chris Robinson on the issue of subraces, just look at his so far single page of tweet history. Often using Wildhammer and Mag'har as the go to examples. Dude. Man. Dude.

Originally Posted by Mormolyce

I think that they should at least allow plate classes to mog mail below level 40 or whatever it was. Really sucks how I got together a full set of the old Scarlet Crusade armour but can only mog it on a mail class, which is weird as it's obviously paladin/warrior themed.

I know, and I just realized the 8 year old Paladin I deleted and turned into a shaman had the whole Scarlet set in his bank when you said that. /cry

Originally Posted by Mormolyce

Don't think I ever tried to use mine in combat, dunno why they don't relax that restriction.

Ghosts.

Originally Posted by Mormolyce

Cursed white gear exclusion!

I wish Blizzard would let me come to Irvine on my own dime and sit there and sort every single white item in the game and flag what seems silly or not to be mogged.

And if it's an issue of looking too mundane and not heroic enough, I'll do my best. I'll even bring cookies. Special cookies.

Originally Posted by Mormolyce

I'm thinking new faces will in a way look more similar to each other because the old faces had their expression baked into the texture (eg you choose a cranky face and look cranky regardless of what emote your character is doing) whereas the new ones have full facial expressions controlled by underlying bones so the skins themselves will have to have neutral expressions.

It's a concern, and a major concern for Chris Robinson who has tweeted they are going out of their way to look for options around this issue to make this as precise as possible when we see our character to recognize the character we originally made. I doubt it will be as bad as people make it out to be, but it won't be perfect, which people will make out to be as nightmarish on par with falling sky.

Originally Posted by Mormolyce

There is no way Azeroth was Intelligently Designed!

The gnomish engineer Lawrence Krauss-cog has some insane ideas about a vacuum, not to mention that insane Mandelbrot principal governing the behaviors of emergent order from chaos. I'm not pointing fingers, but young Azeroth creationists are more and more believed to be behind the irradiation of Gnomeregan.

It's a concern, and a major concern for Chris Robinson who has tweeted they are going out of their way to look for options around this issue to make this as precise as possible when we see our character to recognize the character we originally made. I doubt it will be as bad as people make it out to be, but it won't be perfect, which people will make out to be as nightmarish on par with falling sky.

What I don't want to see are complaints saying that their old models had different face models, because they didn't. And I don't think they'll all have neutral looking textures, they won't constantly show their teeth (painted on their lips) anymore, but they can still have wrinkles with a default "expression" so to speak.

What I don't want to see are complaints saying that their old models had different face models, because they didn't. And I don't think they'll all have neutral looking textures, they won't constantly show their teeth (painted on their lips) anymore, but they can still have wrinkles with a default "expression" so to speak.

Yeah, and you know it's going to happen, again and again and again. Brace for it.

My first love and main to this day going back to 04 started out with the Night Elf "pissed off" face.
Since then, in his road to anger management and serenity, he's aged and has this face. Yes, I removed some of that furby glow effect. Cuz photoshop.
I'd love to see them do that pissed off face with actual sneered pulled back modeled lips and fangs. Maybe the facial expressions will allow for it via some kind of compromise between the two extremes. I'm eager to see.

Frankly I hate most of the Night Elf male faces besides these 2. Most people think the pissed off face looks bad, but I like it for showing how feral and savage the Night Elf is compared to the common elf trope of fantasy pop culture. It reminds me of Wolverine when you give him mutton chops.

After four years I got the Cursed Vision of Sargeras and wanted to demonstrate as much through in game mechanics as possible with my role playing. So I changed to the Demon hunter tattoo face I used for several more years because I RP a straight up "wannabe" demon hunter who tried piecing together the rituals and spells on my own with my role playing friends, and when the eye blinding ritual happened we tried a do it yourself wannabe fel imbuement that left my character almost dead from corruption and in a state of constant rot. That required a special healing buffer that took regular reinforcement and all I got to show for all this was a lousy "sense demons" on my minimap and leaving cool green fire in my footsteps using the loot card. It took about 3 years of more RP to reverse the brash decisions of my character's past and cleanse me of the foul corruption(lol RP) AMEN! HALLELUJAH!

Now I look all serene n shit.

Anyways, I'd also love to see if they make that demon hunter face a real 3d eye binding (with dare I say color selection?) if they're never going to give us demon hunters beyond the weird token efforts we do have in warlocks and rogues, once and for all.

Or alternatively if they make it a really cool high resolution tattoo.
I want a tattoo like this.

i would consider rolling a night elf if they made the eye wrap look good or gave us those cool tattoos.

and i dislike night elves greatly

"I was a normal baby for 30 seconds, then ninjas stole my mamma" - Deadpool
"so what do we do?" "well jack, you stand there and say 'gee rocket raccoon I'm so glad you brought that Unfeasibly large cannon with you..' and i go like this BRAKKA BRAKKA BRAKKA" - Rocket Raccoon

i would consider rolling a night elf if they made the eye wrap look good or gave us those cool tattoos.

and i dislike night elves greatly

I love the Night Elf player models. Fuckin' love em. All their concept art is great and I think the models in game look a lot like Samwise draws them. My only problem is their default at rest posture looks so stiff. Way too symmetrical and uptight.

As soon as you look at them from the side or 3/4ths angle they look great to me, for the most part, or if you mouse look with their head by holding down R click and turning their head to the side.
I really adore their side profile, so harsh and extreme, the strong beaked nose, the jut of the chin.

When they spread their feet apart a little more naturally and look down when opening their map, it suddenly makes them pretty much perfect to me. I just wish they didn't have a stick back up their arse when they put their map away. Doesn't a wannabe demon hunter look funny reading a map with a blindfold on? Sometimes I sit there in town remarking on how I can't see anything in /say while feeling silly.
But I think it's big improvement when you seen them just distributing their weight more naturally. Their feet more spread apart.
If their weight distribution was more natural I'd pretty much be fine, just as the new dwarf looks compared to the old one, I hope to see the same kind of thing in the new night elf.

I CANT WAIT! But as for the original design I specifically LIKE their huge hands and feet and no wrists, and their big floppy ears. Things I know many people hate, but I love it. This is odd being as I'm usually a dwarf freak with the bearded heart of a beard dwarf with my heard even having a beard of it's own, but I have a love for gritty elves probably owed to my love of mythology and the Elf quest comic book from Wendy Pini. This specific painting here in 2004 is what pushed me into buying WOW. I loved the look of this fairy tale old growth forest and the more tribal wild elves paired with the vibrant over saturated colors, I wanted to go to this land and escape reality there. And I loved his big ass boots and gauntlets. It's just fun to draw things like that, and I feel the fun coming from the artist when they do it, kind of like a weird telekinetic exchange of whimsical fun. The energy (not metaphysical woo but aesthetic) in an artist's form and line weight, all that was amazing to see in a video game for the first time really in WOW with minimalist artists working in constrained limited visual asset budgets to bleed whatever they could from the sponge.

This TCG card art of the Druid Tharal Wildbreeze makes me giggle with pleasure at how far the artist pushed it. Big shoulders, tiny waist, giant hands, big ears.
You guys would probably hate to see the way I draw Night Elves lately if I scanned any of my shit from the last 2 years. I pretty much take this and go with it.

Illidan's new model is pretty much perfect as a compromise for us all and I can't wait to see if they go in that direction. In a way he's a little too realistic for me, but I know all of you appreciate it who aren't too big on the whimsy like me. I think it's a solid compromise.

These original concept art drawings are my favorite when it comes to what I want the player models to look based on. Male and female.
This is like, THE DEFINITIVE for me. Ripped muscles, huge shoulders, tiny exaggerated waist, I just seem them charging around like
brick houses slamming through walls while lithe and acrobatic at the same time, like a ninja orc.
Would love a bald top know for a female like this warden has.
And the clawed jewelry worn by this huntress.

This too I just adore. Personally I love the claws and think they should be more than just something druids of the claw or talon have or demon hunters. Azshara and Tyrande both have black sharp finger nails on their hands on the new model. I want that too on the new female player model.

This DK art is one of my favorite most extreme examples, and reminds me more of how the Druids of the Claw looked in Warcraft 3. I would die for an option like that in game too.
And I love Tjacobs, from the Sons of the Storm, this image of Malfurion with his giant hands. This probably is like a knife in the eye to some of you.

Now if we could just get some geoset models for hakama pants in game like Illidan and Malfurion wear.